Model Jourdan Dunn,19,who is seven months pregnant, attended the Issa Fashion Show during London Fashion Week on September 20, 2009 in London, United Kingdom.
Meanwhile , a recent DeKalb County(Georgia,USA) high school graduate named Ginny McNulty, 19, has written an opinion piece on peer health education. Ginny’s opinion may make some of you put less of a blame on teenagers like Jourdan (for getting pregnant at a young age) and more on the educational system:
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…Even though last spring President Barack Obama ended federal funding for abstinence-only programs — many of which proved to be ineffective in delaying sexual activity until marriage — not much has changed yet in Georgia.
As a senior in high school I joined the Teen Action Group (TAG) — Planned Parenthood’s teen peer health educators — because I wanted to empower myself and my fellow teens on matters of sexual health.
Now, I see firsthand how responsive teens are to complete and accurate information. Young people are thirsty for knowledge and recognize how important this information is to their lives.
I have seen how well teens respond to messages from other teens, often even better than they do with adult educators.
For many of my peers who have only had ineffective programs in their schools, I am thankful that peer educators like me and the TAG group will continue to be sources of good information in our communities.
The goal of this program is to educate young people about delaying sexual activity and utilizing good decision-making skills and contraception as a way of reducing the number of teen pregnancies in our state.
To schools and policymakers: Providing us with abstinence- only-until-marriage programs limits our decision-making abilities. Withholding information about safer sex and contraception could put our lives at risk.”
Click here to read more from Ginny
